Mechwarrior

[kosall]

I always admired Mechwarrior... not the rules so much but the idea that the pilot of your mech actually mattered beyond providing a Gunnery and Pilot skill.

And with all this talk about Shadowrun and Battletech and FFG I was thinking what I would do if I could change it to make the pilot a little more relevant.

So, I present some rules for creating Pilot + Mech combos.

Pilots are supposed to be bad***. The more experienced the pilot, the smaller the mech they desire to drive. The quest to challenge yourself is all that drives you or some shit like that.

To build your mech and pilot you get 100 points. With these points you can chose a mech on a 1 ton = 1 point ratio. The leftover points can be used to build your pilot (I know this leads to Supreme pilots running around in Locusts but thems the breaks).

Pilot skills cost 5 per rank and theoretically go on forever but for starting purposes we'll limit them to 5 with 9 being the practical maximum. Ranks in a skill provide a static bonus and a secondary bonus at every odd rank.

Pilot -
Pilot is used for piloting checks.
1: Force a reroll of a location hit once per encounter
3: Once per encounter make a roll and add your Pilot. If this roll exceeds the roll to hit the shot missed you.
5: Force a reroll of a location hit 2x per encounter
7: Twice per encounter make a roll and add your Pilot ranks. If this roll exceeds the roll to hit the shot missed you.
9: Force a reroll of a location hit 3x per encounter

Gunnery -
Each rank in Gunnery is used in To Hit Rolls
1: Once per Encounter reroll a to hit roll.
3: Once per Encounter reroll a location roll.
5: 2x per Encounter reroll a to hit roll.
7: 2x per Encounter reroll a location roll.
9: 3x per Encounter reroll a to hit roll.

Heat Management -
Each rank in Heat Management provides one extra heat sink.
1: Once per Encounter you can reroll a check forced by heat (ammo cookoff, forced shutdown, etc).
3: Once per Encounter you can ignore the penalties associated with heat generated for one round.
5: 2x per Encounter you can reroll a check forced by heat (ammo cookoff, forced shutdown, etc).
7: 2x per Encounter you can ignore the penalties associated with heat generated for one round.
9: 3x per Encounter you can reroll a check forced by heat (ammo cookoff, forced shutdown, etc).

Internal Systems -
Internal Systems provides a round to round buffer of Internal Structure points that can be used to soak damage. These points recycle at the start of your combat phase.
1: Once per Encounter make a roll and add your Internal Systems ranks. If this roll exceeds the damage that penetrates your armor you ignore it.
3:
5: 2x per Encounter make a roll and add your Internal Systems ranks. If this roll exceeds the damage that penetrates your armor you ignore it.
7:
9: 3x per Encounter make a roll and add your Internal Systems ranks. If this roll exceeds the damage that penetrates your armor you ignore it.

Armor Knowledge -
Armor Knowledge provides a round to round buffer of External Armor damage points that can be used to soak damage. These points recycle at the start of your combat phase.
1:
3: Once per Encounter make a roll and add your Armor Knowledge ranks. If this roll exceeds the damage from a single weapon then you can ignore it.
5:
7: Once per Encounter make a roll and add your Armor Knowledge ranks. If this roll exceeds the damage from a single weapon then you can ignore it.
9:

Missile Mastery -
Ranks in Missile Mastery can be added to rolls to determine how many missiles strike the target.
1: Once per Encounter reroll the amount of missiles that hit with an attack.
3:
5: 2x per Encounter reroll the amount of missiles that hit with an attack.
7:
9: 3x per Encounter reroll the amount of missiles that hit with an attack.

[the_taken]

I hereby recruit thee to assist me in my project.

fixed url tag --Z
thank you very much --the_taken

[Lokathor]

Small mechs only being used by high skill pilots doesn't quite make sense though. You want your better mechs with your better pilots for more force multiplication. The big mechs have more bigger weapons, so you want them to be controlled by your best pilots.

On the 50-point heat scale having a "Heat Management skill is way cool. Armor, Internals, and Missiles don't jive as much with me as skills. If you added various talents I could see room for a missiles talent, but in general that doesn't really fit with the fluff for missiles (assuming you're trying to not change the fluff to much). I also think it might make missiles too good, but they're kinda weak to start with, so maybe it's okay.

Armor and Internals don't make sense to me at all with how BattelTech portrays the loss of armor and internals points. If it was like Shadowrun where you get a soak roll on each attack or something then that'd be cool, but I don't think it fits into existing BattelTech.

[kosall]

Well, if I called them abilities or talents would that make you feel better

I know it wouldn't make sense to have ace pilots in light mechs but that's how the system would be theoretically balanced.

I don't think the skills do enough even making them like that. Anyway, it was just something I threw together on my way to work so it's not like it's even a fully fledged out idea.

[Lokathor]

Well my implication was that something like "Missile Expert" is a thing that you get just once and it gives you a +2 but that you can't just scale it up and up.

Also, any sort of regenerative HP kind of thing doesn't seem to fit with BattleTech in general (It's just way too good because there's nothing else that can repair/heal you during a combat). Maybe that's just me.

[kosall]

You are taking into account the fact that this is a 20-30 ton mech vs a 80-100 ton mech, right?

I mean, I can imagine having your ace pilot in a heavy mech being virtually immune to stuff and it being right up there with the stuff that happens in the battletech books. And you don't have to render the ability as "healing" it might just be that I know that if I "roll" with the blow it'll do less damage type thing.